History Of Architecture

William MorrisWilliam Morris

William Morris - Introduction William Morris was born in Walthamstow, London

in 1834. He was educated at Marlborough School and Exeter College, Oxford. He spent a year working for G. E. Street, where he initiated a lifelong friendship with Philip Webb, Street's chief assistant.

Recognizing the poor quality of contemporary furnishings and fittings, Morris, helped found the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Co. The firm produced furniture, fabrics, wallpapers, and stained glass.

A prime mover in the establishment of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, Morris fought to save buildings from a prevalent, but destructive policy of "restoration". He was the founder and leader of the socialist league, as well as the founder of the Kelmscott Press which specialized in designing lettering and borders, and publishing English literature, both classic and contemporary.

Morris considered art "the expression of man's joy Morris considered art "the expression of man's joy in his labour". This principle inspired a generation in his labour". This principle inspired a generation of disciples. of disciples.

William Morris

William Morris William Morris was known to be energetic, versatile, and

industrious for he accomplished many projects throughout his career.

He was a popular and prolific Victorian poet and translator of Northern mythology.

As an artist-craftsman he invented and revived lost techniques for printing, and for creating textiles, embroidery and stained glass.

He opened his own textile factory,and became a successful entrepreneur in the decorating and manufacturing business.

He was thus eminent as poet, novelist, translator, artist, and printer, also gained a place in the history of socialism.

During the last two decades of his life he became an ardent Socialist, giving hundreds of lectures on the topic throughout Britain. Despite various ventures, Morris had a lasting enthusiasm for medievalism and Arthuriana.

Vision of William Morris William Morris’ work is important and addresses serious and

fundamental questions in a way that few have done : the nature of work and its relation to art; how work is to be organised and by whom; what is to be produced and how: what it is to be human what our real needs are anyway.

Morris’ importance lies not in having given unimpeachable answers to these questions, but in that he managed to formulate the questions in ways that were both illuminating and suggestive. Central to Morris’ thought is the question of what it is we are fighting for, and it is his vision of an alternative future that informs his whole approach.Morris saw the need for free creative activity, for work, as a fundamental human need, every bit as basic as the needs for food, clothing and housing. His vision provides a guiding light towards recovering the communist perspective.

Morris elaborated his vision of a communist organisation of work, in the prose romances like News from Nowhere, and also in the course of numerous lectures.

News from NowhereNews from Nowhere and A Dream of John BallA Dream of John Ball are some examples of his communal approach. News from Nowhere, in particular, is full of ambiguities.

Morris - Circle Morris formed a consortium with like

minded people in 1861, namely , Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Philip webb, & John Edmund street. These then worked together as a team to commission the works. The projects mainly included residences and their interiors. Because of the customization of all products the cost was impeccably high which was not affordable to many.

The people associated with him stayed with him throughout and have commissioned some of the best pieces of art.

Philip Webb shared the most long lasting relationship with Morris and also helped him to build the Red House- residence for William Morris.

Christina Rossetti.

Arts And Craft Movement The concept of industrial design was born from the Arts and

Crafts Movement. Christopher Dresser has been identified as the father of industrial design, the principal that mass produced goods could still be well-designed. And although many of the true Arts and Crafts proponents would have nothing to do with mass production from factories, their ideas greatly influenced the design standards of the factories.

After the Great Exhibition of 1851 there was a desire amongst Victorian middle class people to acquire goods which looked magnificent and affluent, without spending much money. These were the "nouveau riche", not very highly educated, not artistically sophisticated, but with enough money to spend that they were a major influence on the manufacturers. And on the other hand, manufacturers took advantage of the capacity of machines to make goods which looked sumptuous but were very cheaply made. The goods of this period have been described as "absurdly decorated with gilt, veneers, and marble used at every opportunity". Walter Crane called it "design debauchery".

It was into this environment that the Arts and Crafts Movement entered and advocated good simple design made in basic, inexpensive materials but to a high standard.

Arts & Craft Movement The name derives from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition

Society (1888). Inspired by John Ruskin and other writers who deplored the effects of industrialization, William Morris founded a firm of interior designers and manufacturers to produce handcrafted textiles, printed books, wallpaper, furniture, jewelry, and metalwork. The movement was criticized as elitist and impractical in an industrial society, but in the 1890s its appeal widened and spread to other countries, including the U.S.

William Morris was a writer and a designer of fabrics, furniture, and books. He took the ideas of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites and turned them into practical realities. His workshops produced beautiful products made by artists and craftsmen. He looked backwards for his inspiration, admiring Gothic designs and the social structure of the middle ages. But at the end of his life he was disillusioned, and faced the stark reality that the goods his artists made were too expensive for the masses. His designs enhanced only the lives of the rich. They did not change society in the way he had hoped.

Arts & Craft Movement The Arts and Crafts Movement was a response to the industrial

revolution. It was a broad and diverse movement, incorporating many idealistic themes. The common beliefs were:

Well-designed buildings, furniture, and household goods would improve society

The material environment affected the moral fibre of society The ideal was contented workers making beautiful objects both design and working lives had been better in the past.

Suddenly in the early 19th century there were huge factories manufacturing millions of items, and goods which had formerly been made by artisans, craftsmen/women, and artists were now being made without the help of any of these people. The factories were criticised for their effects on the day to day lives of working people and for their effects on the home environment, filled with goods which were perceived to be devoid of beauty, devoid of harmony, and just plain ugly.

England in particular went through a low period in terms of the design and quality of its manufactured goods, so much so that the government set up a Select Committee on Art and Manufactures in 1835.

Morris: The Separation of Art and Work

Morris’ critique of capitalism started from that of Ruskin, but went further. Even before he became a communist, he was already making fundamental criticisms of bourgeois society

In ‘The Lesser Arts’, Morris argued that in the Middle Ages there had been no division of art into the ‘higher’ arts and the ‘lesser’ arts. Artists were simply craftsmen who turned their skills to different tasks as the need arose – painting, sculpture, architecture, pottery, etc. With the separation of the arts into the greater and the lesser, both had suffered. Art had been separated from the people, and the crafts had gone into a decline. The workshop system of the eighteenth century had initiated this decline, and made worse by the factory system of the nineteenth century, especially by the use of machines. This had robbed the worker of all joy in labour. Art had been expelled from the production process, and shoddy workmanship and design was the result.

The decorative arts, he argued, ‘are part of a system intended for the expression of man’s delight in beauty’; they ‘are the sweeteners of human labor, both to the handicraftsman whose life is spent in working in them, and to people in general who are influenced by the sight of them at every turn of the day’s work; they make our toil happy, our rest fruitful’. To restore the decorative arts to their former glory required enormous change in social organisation. The decorative arts were in a state of anarchy and disorder, and ‘the only real help’ for them ‘must come from those who work in them; nor must they be led, they must lead’.

Morris: The Separation of Art and Work

For Morris, at stake was the nature of work as such; which was the most at stake was the nature of work as such; which was the most important.important. An artist was merely ‘a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent’. It was necessary that ‘the handicraftsman, left behind by the artist when the arts were sundered, must come up with him, must work side by side with him’. There were ‘stupendous difficulties, social and economic’, hindering this task, but they had to be overcome.

He thought leisure was needed ‘from poverty and all its griping, sordid cares’. Once that was achieved, ‘we should have leisure to think about our work, that faithful daily companion, which no one will venture to call the curse of labour’. Each one would then be happy in work, ‘each in his place, no man grudging at another; no one bidden to be any man’s servant, every one scorning to be any man’s master: men will then assuredly be happy in their work, and that happiness will assuredly bring forth decorative, noble, popular art. In such condition of society, ‘every man will have his share of the best’.

This was written in 1877, before Morris crossed the ‘river of fire’ and became a socialist. Yet we can see the core of a critique of capitalism. Morris had taken Ruskin to the verge of socialism. He was to elaborate on this perspective and develop it. He did not abandon it.

Art and Socialism The condition of art was closely ‘bound up with the general condition of

society, and especially with the lives of those who live by manual labour and who we call the working class’, as he put it in ‘Art Under Plutocracy’ in 1884. Everything a man makes is either a pleasure to him or a source of pain, either beautiful or ugly. In times when art was abundant and healthy, all workers were artists, the instinct for beauty being so inborn in every individual that the whole body of craftsmen made beautiful things as a matter of course, and the whole population was an audience for the ‘intellectual arts’ – poetry, painting, etc.

In modern times, the instinct for beauty had become checked, and little beauty was expressed in the decorative arts. The loss of this instinct for beauty had gone so far that it was ‘surely and not slowly destroying the beauty of the very face of the earth’. Indeed, ‘the well of art is poisoned at its spring’.

The degradation of the arts was not the product of industrial society as such, but of ‘the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life’. Morris was of the view that this change would ‘give an opportunity for the new birth of art, which is now being crushed to death by the money-bags of competitive commerce’.

William Morris’s Art Works

Garden Sub-urbs The credit for Conservation of Garden sub-urbs goes to

Morris as he advocated that the city dwellers should have access to clean environment, thus, being close to nature.

This concept also reflects William Morris’s love for natural beauty and beauty in its purest form.

The concept of Garden Sub-urbs was further expanded and theorized by Ebnezar Howard.

Excellent OratorMorris lectured all around europe on disadvantages of the industrial revolution and advised people to go back to the Pre-industrial times.He prepared a series of 35 lectures on this topic.

Morris and Machinery It is precisely this that explains Morris’ apparently paradoxical

view of machinery. He was suspicious of the machine, as Pevsner notes, but his later insistence that we must become masters of our machines is not ‘inconsistent’ with his support for the handicrafts. Morris’ attitude to the machine was not simple; it certainly was not a simplistic rejection of the machine.

Initially, Morris had taken a very negative view of machinery. Thus, for example, following John Stuart Mill, he argued that ‘labour-saving machinery’ did not save the worker any labour at all; it saved the capitalist the cost of labour, and enabled him to extend the duration of labour so as to expand profits. He argued that if machinery was used to lighten men’s labour and to relieve them of the burden of labour that was merely painful, ‘the utmost ingenuity would scarcely have been wasted on it’. But he noted that in fact the opposite occurred. Later, however, he began to take a more positive view, arguing that machinery could and should be used to do dangerous and dull work, leaving men free to perform more pleasant tasks.

Morris and Machinery Ideally, Morris would have automated all work that was

unpleasant or mere drudgery, leaving us free to carry out tasks that were more congenial. He also suggested that we might want to think whether we really needed to perform such work as was not intrinsically fulfilling.

The purpose of industrial revolution was to impose control from above, to regulate the very movements of every worker in a factory, to force the worker to work at the rate set by the capitalist. This was built into its very design. Such machinery could not provide the basis for the free, creative labour that Morris saw as the need of every human being. It could not be the basis for creative self-expression. While Morris believed that machinery could be used to lighten men’s work in certain areas, he argued – rightly – that no one should have to spend all his or her time in minding a machine. Such a life could not be bearable.

Morris was not ultimately against machinery as such; he was not committed to the revival of the handicrafts per se, but in infusing machine production with standards of craftsmanship and a spirit of self-expression that had been present in an earlier historical epoch.

Morris and Machinery Work could itself be a pleasure; indeed, ‘the pleasurable exercise

of our energies is at once the source of all art and the cause of all happiness’. In producing goods for use, therefore, the producer will be ‘making the goods for himself; for his pleasure in making them and using them’.

The point of socialism was not, for Morris, a more efficient way of organising mass production, but was rather to abolish the need for mass production. Morris opposed the reduction of the worker to a mere appendage of a machine, forms of production which denied the worker any kind of freedom of self-expression. The machinery necessary for mass production, of which the assembly line is merely the highest form, could never have permitted the free creativity necessary for communism. <P<Final Goal and Immediate DemandsLooking back from the vantage point of the start of the twenty-first century, it is possible to recognise the enduring quality of Morris’ contribution. With the passing of time, it has only gained in relevance. His vision of the final goal is immensely practical. It informed his day-to-day politics, as it could also ours.

Interpretations of Morris To understand William Morris, we must first clear up some

misconceptions. Morris has been appropriated by all sorts of movements and tendencies, both artistic and political. The artists, primarily the modernists, tend to focus on his art at the expense of his politics, and the politicians, anarchists and Marxists alike, focus on his politics at the expense of his art. In separating Morris’ art from his politics, however, they impoverish our understanding of both.

A typical and influential modernist approach is that offered by Pevsner. In Pioneers of Modern Design, Pevsner attempts to assess Morris’ influence on design in abstraction from many of his other concerns. He focuses primarily on Morris’ attempts to reform the product. Morris, he argues, was the first artist to recognise how precarious the social foundations of art had become as a result of the division between the ‘fine’ and the ‘lesser’ arts. Morris wanted to revive the handicrafts and to make the most humble objects of everyday use once more expressions of beauty: ‘We owe it to him that an ordinary man’s dwelling-house has once more become a worthy object of the architect’s thought, a chair, a wallpaper or a vase a worthy object of the artist’s imagination.’ While not himself a modernist, Morris helped initiate a process that culminated in modernism.

Interpretations of Morris Whether the left claims Morris or rejects him, it usually assesses his

political conclusions against some preconceived standard and in abstraction from the totality of his thought. By far the best Marxist account of Morris, one that tries to examine Morris’ work as a whole, is that offered by E.P. Thompson.

Thompson’s thesis is that in becoming a Marxist, Morris did not break with romanticRomanticism, but rather revitalised and transformed the tradition of Keats and Ruskin. Thompson locates Morris in the context of the defeat of the romanticRomantic revoltRevolt. He argues that in his youth Morris was inspired primarily by people like Carlyle and Ruskin; from Carlyle he derived the idea of labour as the basis of life, and from Ruskin the idea that labour must be creative labour if it is to be fit for human beings. Thompson argues, moreover, that although Morris recognised the defeat of romanticRomanticism, he never reconciled himself to it. Indeed, ‘this youthful protest, still burning within him’, brought him into contact in 1882 with the pioneers of socialism: ‘And when he found that these pioneers not only shared his hatred of modern civilisation, but had an historical theory to explain its growth, and the will to change it to a new society, the old fire flared up afresh. Morris, the Romantic in revolt, became a realist and a revolutionary

Interpretations of Morris Thompson compares Ruskin’s critique of the modern labour process

with Marx’s critique of alienated labour and argues that when Morris came to the study of Capital 30 years later, he was already prepared to accept its arguments because of his basis in Ruskin.

Thompson has provided a marvellous and exciting account of Morris’ political evolution. His thesis, summed up in the title, William Morris: From Romantic to Revolutionary, is fundamentally correct. What is at issue is what kind of revolutionary Morris became. While Thompson is right to stress Morris’ closeness to Marx, and his independent road to Marx’s conclusions, he does not really prove his point. To a certain extent, the sheer detail that Thompson offers obscures his own argument. About two-thirds of the book is devoted to discussion of Morris’ day-to-day political activity as a socialist, making it a wonderful source of information about the early socialist movement in England and essential reading. But Morris’ real contribution, his critique of the separation of art and work under capitalism, and his vision of their reunion under communism, gets lost amidst the detail. In a lengthy work, somehow the various strands never quite get tied together.

Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB)

The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) was founded by William Morris and Philip Webb in 1877, to oppose what they saw as the insensitive renovation of ancient buildings then occurring in Victorian England.

Morris was particularly concerned about the practice, which he described as "forgery", of attempting to restore buildings to an idealised state from the distant past. Instead, he proposed that ancient buildings should be protected, not restored, so that their entire history would be preserved as cultural heritage.

SPAB still operates according to Morris's original manifesto. It publishes books, and runs courses and a telephone advice line. Under the Planning Acts the Society must be notified of all applications in England and Wales to demolish in whole or part any listed building. It currently has 8,700 members (2007).

The Society also has a branch in Scotland, and the Mills Section, which is the only British national body concerned with the preservation, repair and continued use of traditional windmills and watermills.

The society which is a registered charity is based at 37 Spital Square, London E1 6DY, England.

Socialism In the 1870s, Morris had begun to take an active interest in

politics. He became treasurer of the National Liberal League in 1879, but after the Irish coercive measures of 1881 he finally abandoned the Liberal party and drifted further into socialism.

Thenceforward for two years his advocacy of the cause of socialism absorbed not only his spare time, but the thought and energy of all his working hours. For it he even neglected literature and art.

At the franchise meeting in Hyde Park in 1884 it was unable to get a hearing. Morris, however, had not yet lost heart. Internal dissensions in 1884 led to the Morris's foundation of the breakaway Socialist League, and in February 1885 a new organ, "Commonweal", began to print Morris's rallying-songs. Still, differences of opinion and degree prevented concerted action; and when, after the Trafalgar Square riots in February 1886, Morris remonstrated with the anarchic section he was denounced by the advanced party and ever afterwards was regarded with suspicion. In 1889 he was deposed from the management of "Commonweal" and gradually lost all confidence in the movement as an active force.

KELMSCOTT PRESS By 1888 Morris was beginning to move beyond his

preoccupation with socialism and direct his attention once more to activities he had promoted during the 1860s and 1870s. To Morris’s surprise many items were on display by artists and craftsmen who were living out his early teachings, actually representing the first circle of Morris admirers and pupils among the next generation of architects, printers, sculptors, decorators, metal workers, etchers, etc. Morris admitted, “I believe they are getting on pretty well.”

Morris & Co. participated in the Exhibit with displays of furniture, stained glass, embroideries, fabrics, textiles, tapestries, and calligraphy. But not one of Morris’s own books was there. Perhaps this was a reflection of the fact that his own writings were still inadequately printed.

Morris took inspiration from Walker who used the slides to show comparisons between the horrors of Victorian typography and the most beautiful books of the past, especially those produced by printers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Walker’s Arts and Crafts Exhibition lecture was the catalyst for the founding of the Kelmscott Press .

The KELMSCOTT PRESS

Morris had solved the problem of finding a source for hand-made paper of sufficient quality, hired appropriately skilled employees, rented space in Hammersmith, installed his equipment, including a Demy Albion press and a Super Royal Genuine Albion Press, he still had to locate a supplier of ink. He searched for a pure product without chemical additives, made from linseed oil, lampblack, and turpentine. Most of the inks he tried had been thinned for use on rotary and cylinder presses, with the result producing a gray, washed-out appearance. With the Albion hand presses, Morris wanted a thicker, slower-drying, very black ink.

Morris printed in golden type style then in gothic which was the most common typeface in northern Europe . Gothic is characterized by narrow, tall, pointed designs, acute angles, an absence of curves, and heavy black strokes.

Golden Type Printing

Gothic Type Printing

William Morris - influences Such was the man William Morris: painter, poet, translator, designer,

decorator, craftsman, manufacturer, businessman, printer, artist, socialist, reformer, husband, father, friend. To honor this life and commemorate the hundredth anniversary of his death, the Special Collections Library at The University of Michigan has mounted this exhibit. Included are first and early editions, descriptions and photos of his art, and a fine array of books from his Kelmscott Press. The story describes one of the great Victorians, a man who was at once a dreamer and idealist as well as a realist and pragmatist. At the time of his death, his attending physician is said to have remarked that here lived a man who accomplished “more work than most ten men.” Literary critic George Sampson, when he was summing up Morris’s amazing career, said, “His whole strength of purpose was dedicated to the reconstitution of modern life, upon conditions that would bring beauty to all men.” Morris’s enlightened vision still beckons to our contemporaries, and perhaps is one explanation for his enduring reputation.

It was the work of John Ruskin that had the most profound impact on Morris.

The main influence was The Nature of the Gothic, originally a chapter of The Stones of Venice (1853), in which Ruskin discussed gothic architecture in respect of both its material form and its spiritual essence

Art for the People William Morris, promised that utilitarian objects would

become works of art thus transforming bored and benighted laborers into inspired craftsmen. Morris said that to practice one’s craft was to become enlightened and ennobled. He said “the artist-craft workers were destined to serve as a cadre for the regeneration of nations.” As all members of a given community became either producers or consumers of unique individually produced objects of art, a profound social healing would result.

Moreover, the centrality of all the arts from pottery to architecture would be restored. Morals and manners would be improved. Under the pursuit of a craft aesthetic, social unity might be strengthened. The movement even fostered a common sense of ownership of the national landscape. Morris foresaw the rise of a kind of land ethic. A new sense of accountability would emerge to rescue green England from under the bleak carcass of the industrial wasteland. Arts & Crafts celebrated the braided strength of art, virtue, and work. Even imperialism and mass production would be abandoned with the advance of homo aestheticus.

Morris Art His stained glass, medieval murals, wallpapers and fabric

designs turned out to be so labor intensive that only wealthy cultured voluptuary could afford them. His beautifully crafted household utensils were too expensive to compete with cheap mass produced goods. Etched against the immense squalor of industrial Britain and North America, the buildings of Morris and his mentor, John Ruskin, were little more than a scattering of sunbeams in an architectural midnight. But while Morris died bankrupt and bitterly disappointed, his legacy lived on in the Roycroft of North America, in the craft communes of the 1960’s and in the booming Modern Arts Crafts Movement on five continents.

The intricacy in Morris designs can be seen in his printing also, the intrinsic borders has floral patterns.

The style, if not the social ethic, of Arts & Crafts is alive and well in millions of homes and businesses around the world.

Morris - Writings Among Morris’s many aesthetic passions was an

appreciation for language and the written word. His literary production, like his reading, was wide-ranging: during his lifetime he wrote poems, translations, book reviews, bellettristic essays, short stories, and prose romances, including a number of works advocating English socialism.

“A Night in a Cathedral” , “The Earthly Paradise” , “Love is Enough”. Are amongst some of the best publications by William Morris, in which he writes about the life experiences in different situations. Through these one can make out the intellectual approach of Morris towards life.

This Morris work also showcase the extreme Love and respect for art which were embedded into him.

Biography William Morris (March 24, 1834 – October 3, 1896) was one of the

principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts Movement and is best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction, and an early founder of the socialist movement in Britain.

The tragic conflict in Morris’s life was his unfulfilled desire to create affordable – or even free – beautiful things for common people, whereas the real-life result was always the creation of extremely expensive objects for the discerning few. (In his utopian novel News from Nowhere, everybody works for pleasure only, and beautifully handcrafted things are given away for free to those who simply appreciate.)

Morris was born in Walthamstow near London. His family was wealthy, and he went to Oxford (Exeter College), where he became influenced by John Ruskin and met his life-long friends and collaborators, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, and Philip Webb. He also met his wife, Jane Burden, a working-class woman whose pale skin and coppery hair were considered by Morris and his friends the epitome of beauty.

Biography The artistic movement Morris and the others made famous was

the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They eschewed the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture and favoured a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising craftsmen to the status of artists.

Morris left Oxford to join an architecture firm, but soon found himself drawn more and more to the decorative arts. He and Webb built Red House at Bexleyheath in Kent, Morris’s wedding gift to Jane. It was here his design ideas began to take physical shape. The brick clocktower in Bexleyheath town centre had, in 1996, a bust of Morris added in an original niche.

Morris and Rossetti rented a country house, Kelmscott Manor near Lechlade, Gloucestershire, as a summer retreat, but it soon became a retreat for Rossetti and Jane Morris to have a long-lasting affair. To escape the discomfort, Morris often travelled to Iceland, where he researched Icelandic legends that later became the basis of poems and novels.

After the death of Tennyson in 1892, Morris was offered the Poet Laureateship, but declined.

William Morris died in 1896 and was interred in the churchyard at Kelmscott village in Oxfordshire

Biography In 1861, he founded the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

with Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Madox Brown, and Philip Webb. Throughout his life, he continued to work in his own firm, although the firm changed names. Its most famous incarnation was as Morris and Company. His designs are still sold today under licences given to Sanderson and Sons and Liberty of London.

In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. His preservation work resulted indirectly in the founding of the National Trust.

Morris and his daughter May were amongst Britain’s first socialists, working directly with Eleanor Marx and Engels to begin the socialist movement. In 1883 he joined the Social Democratic Federation, and in 1884 he organised the Socialist League. One of his best known works, News from Nowhere, is a utopian novel describing a socialist society. This side of Morris’s work is well-discussed in the biography (subtitled ‘Romantic to Revolutionary’) by E. P. Thompson.

Morris’s book, The Wood Between the Worlds, is considered to have heavily influenced C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series, while J. R. R. Tolkien was inspired by Morris’s reconstructions of early Germanic life in ‘The House of the Wolfings’ and ‘The Roots of the Mountains’.

Conclusion Thus William Morris was eminent as poet, novelist, translator, artist,

and printer, a socialist, and an excellent orator. Morris was deeply in love with art in its purest form and

considered that art pieces should be exclusive which should have some time and patience associated with them, this was the reason that he opposed industrial revolution as it parted man from art, hence the sentiments and labor associated with the art piece, which according to him was bad.

He even advocated his thoughts through a religious tilt against industrial revolution as he said that, ”Salvation can be attained only when people rely on hand crafted goods.”

He also said “Production by machine is evil”. As he made everything by hand, the cost became extravagant and what he had aimed could not be successful. He wanted that art should be available to all which became impossible because of extravagant cost.

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